Abstract
Yejun Kim
04/27/25
STS 4600
Socio-Technical Synthesis
In my technical project, my team investigated the use of an electrostatic precipitator, typically used in mines and household air purifiers, for removing dust particles in a Martian environment to mitigate the potential negative impacts to the health of astronauts and damage to instruments. Similarly, my STS research examined the repurposing of signal processing for algorithmic trading firms, and the impact of this technology on the overall stability of global markets. Both seek to explore the reuse of technologies for unrelated problems, and their effectiveness as solutions.
Our design combines a wind tunnel and an electrostatic precipitator as an intermediary chamber leading into the astronauts’ habitat. In concept, the astronauts will enter the chamber with their instruments, covered in dust, and have the dust blown off by the wind tunnel and collected by the electrostatic precipitator. The electrostatic precipitator is a two-stage device that applies a charge to a stream of particles carried via airflow and collects them on a plate of opposite charge. To achieve this goal, a mesh with a negative charge is raised to a sufficiently high voltage to produce a coronal discharge, which ionizes the surrounding air. For the plates, they are alternating in grounded and positive charged plates so that an electric field forms between each plate. The wind tunnel generates enough airflow to keep particles aloft and carry them to the electrostatic precipitator.
In my STS paper, I argue that high-frequency trading firms provide a net benefit to the global markets through a utilitarian analysis of their trading practices. For the case study, I chose to investigate the 2010 Flash Crash, during which the market lost more than a trillion dollars in market value over half an hour, reflected in various assets, including stocks, options, ETFs and futures. To evaluate the impact of high-frequency trading on the global market through utilitarianism, we apply the hedonic calculus on the global impact of high-frequency trading strategies on the seven dimensions of intensity, duration, certainty, propinquity, fecundity, purity, and extent.
By working on these two projects concurrently, I learned about the theoretical design of electrostatic precipitators, as well as strategies used by high-frequency trading firms. While there is no overlap between these projects, I think that I gained a lot of knowledge about the technical details behind ESPs and the various statistical, signal processing and machine learning techniques involved in gathering data, constructing portfolios and searching for arbitrage opportunities in the global market. In the future, I will apply the insights from my STS research topic to build effective strategies in my own profession that also contribute to the stability and liquidity of financial markets.
